Born Again I Suppose
by Hoshi No Kabi
Summary: The same Kodocha characters, hopefully faithfully represented, in a new set of circumstances. Please enjoy! Probably more meaningful if you've actually read or seen Kodocha.
1. Crossing Paths

Born Again I Suppose: KDO in a different set of circumstances The characters are not mine.  
  
1. Crossing Paths  
Two babies were wheeled down a hallway by two recalcitrant nurses. The nurses looked remarkably alike: hair scraped back into painful looking ponytails, scrubs with giraffes and ABC's on them, and identical indifferent expressions hanging on their faces. It was not their fault, even the miracle of birth fails to inspire when a nurse is serving her third understaffed shift and it is well past midnight. Even the infants looked alike: similar dark patches of hair, squinting eyes, and wailing mouths. The only thing to distinguish the two nurses and their charges was that one infant was smothered in a light blue blanket and the other in pale pink. The two nurses parted at an intersection of two hallways.  
It was the first time the mother had seen her little girl since the birth two hours ago at midnight. Though she was faint with exhaustion she pushed herself up in her bed to watch as the nurse wheeled in the screaming child wrapped in a pale pink blanket. The mother reached out to receive the child the nurse held out and as the mother settled the warm bundle that was now emitting less ear-splitting yelps, the blanket fell open and the mother saw something that surprised her very much. So much that she screamed even louder than the baby girl had moments before as she discovered that the supposed baby girl was proved a boy by one obvious fact of anatomy!  
The nurse gasped and grabbed the child whispering "Sorry, sorry, sorry...we wrapped the wrong one, oh God!" as she backed out of the room breaking into a run when she struck the hallway. A scream was heard from the other side of the hospital wing and another nurse came running and the exchange was made. Apologies were made and accepted and so it was that from birth, two babies who would be named that very day, Sana Kurata and Akito Hayama, had already crossed paths. 


	2. Kazoku

Born Again I Suppose: KDO in a different set of circumstances The characters are not mine.  
  
2. Kazoku  
A beautiful woman dressed in an old-fashioned kimono sat making delicate kanji strokes with an old-fashioned ink brush and well. She was the picture of an old-time author. But she was only writing nonsense words and she was sitting in a display case. People peered in at her curiously; there was a class trip taking notes and some assorted old ladies and tourists. It was a Sunday and the museum was, of course, crowded.  
Mariko didn't mind her job. It paid relatively well and frankly, it was the only job she could find. After she escaped from her parents when she turned eighteen, she had been hard-pressed to find an apartment and a job to pay the rent. She was finally settled, alone in the world (she called it independent) and surviving.  
Sometimes she was assigned to lead tours or assist at a different exhibit but strangely she preferred sitting at this particular display. As the straggling group of second graders was herded on to the next exhibit a mother led her shy child forward. "Don't worry dear. That woman works here. See, she's posing. She won't hurt you." The mother smiled reassuringly at her kid and brushed the glass with her fingers.  
Mariko couldn't resist. Abruptly she darted from her docile position to snap at the mother's hand with her teeth. The mother uttered a small scream and leaped backwards not trusting the thin barrier the glass afforded her from this maniac. She looked back appalled, as she led her child away at an almost running pace. Mariko returned to her post hoping the woman wouldn't report her. Her boss had threatened to fire her if she engaged in any more "antics" as he called them. She sighed and began writing kanji again in an endless incoherent stream, mizu, kokuban, natsu, sana. Her hand froze on the last stroke. Sana? That wasn't even a word! Where had that come from? Sana, sana the word echoed in her mind reverberating against the walls returning with nothing but a disturbing feeling of familiarity. She placed the tip of the brush on the page and bemusedly watched her hand trace the image of a lovely girl with long locks that framed eyes gleaming with enthusiasm and life. She dropped the brush with a cry wondering how this face, that she could swear she had never seen in her life, had appeared in her mind and poured forth onto the page. She shook her head to clear the feeling and forced her hand to trace out the kanji tabemono but when she looked down she saw with surprise that her rebellious hand had written the kanji for kazoku, family. 


	3. Family

Born Again I Suppose: KDO in a different set of circumstances The characters are not mine.  
  
3. Family  
The bullet train came to a smooth stop and passengers struggled to enter and exit the cars. Asako Kurumi stepped out delicately somehow maintaining her balance despite the frequent jostling. She was caught in the vortex of what looked like a whirlpool of commuters struggling to get where they wanted to be. It looked like they all had the same place in mind. She emerged from the crowd with a faint smile of anticipation on her face and hurried up the stairs toting her small bag behind her.  
"Onee-chan!" a voice bursting with excitement leaked over the top step to find Asako. A small child came spilling after it to tumble into Asako's waiting arms. "Oh Sana," Asako breathed as she embraced her younger sister. It was good to be home. College visits were few and far between and Asako truly missed the whirlwind of energy embodied in her younger sibling. Living apart from her family she often felt out of her element. It had been so hard to find a college, to ultimately decide to tear herself away from the lives she had wrapped herself up in as an adolescent. And now she needed to come home sometimes to remind herself who she was.  
Together they climbed the stairs, Asako's taller figure inclined towards the stream of words pouring from the smaller one. Mitsuya-san* waited at the top step and no surprise tears were streaming down her face. "Oh Asako, I just can't believe-It's so good to see you home!" Asako laughed to see Mitsuya crying. The three of them embraced and sought out their car.  
Asako vaguely watched the streets go by occupied in her thoughts. I was sixteen, almost an adult when I lost our mother. And it seems I'm the only one who remembers she existed. Sana wouldn't remember, she had just been born. It was a perfectly normal birth, mom called me at midnight to tell me I had a little sister. When I came to the hospital the next morning they told me mom was gone. And there was a baby. I gained a sister but lost a mother: someone I needed to take care of exchanged for someone I needed care from. Mitsuya's hysterics reminded me to be strong. And I drove them all home illegally that day. I was too young to drive but I carted them in and dragged them all home. And somehow we all pulled through.  
  
After the grief, they learned to live again, the necessity of caring for Sana drawing Mitsuya and Asako closer to sisters rather than the relationship it should have been with Mitsuya as the guardian of the children she had been assigned. But she was only five years older than Asako and much more fragile. And Asako reveled in their need for her and her ability to care for her most beloved: her family.  
  
*In the original series Mitsuya was Mitsuya-sensei, Sana's elementary school teacher who was abused by Hayama's gang. 


	4. Generosity

Born Again I Suppose: KDO in a different set of circumstances The characters are not mine.  
  
3. Generosity Fuka pulled the lapels of her windbreaker closer to her body as the icy wind blasted through its seams. She was so proud of the jacket. Black with red and blue stripes with the tiny insignia on the right corner that pictured a gymnast with two hands on the balance beam and her legs above her head in the splits rendered in golden thread. And on the back her name stitched in more golden cursive: Fuka Matsui. It was the jacket associated with her trainer's gym. Their sensei who ran the school, Sengoku-san* was a marvel for his astonishing performance at the Olympics when he was so young. After receiving the silver medal he mysteriously ended his career and opened up a school.  
It was a very serious gym; Fuka was but five years old, and already expected to perform her exercises flawlessly. She sat on the beam of the wooden fence next to five other girls and boys as they waited for admission into the hospital.  
"This is so stupid!" Fuka said, "We could be back at the gym! Why are we doing this?"  
Another girl shrugged in response, more focused on shielding herself from the gusts of wind.  
Fuka could recognize her trainer's footsteps on the pavement without turning around. His punctuated footfalls came so frequently it sounded like he was running but it was only his hurried gait that reflected his impatience with anything that wasn't up to his standards. The hospital's inefficiency did not meet with his approval and he almost considered their disorganization a personal insult.  
Fuka narrowed her eyes. She could tell he was angry and this only fueled her disapproval with the whole idea. "Sensei why do we have to be here?" She asked politely stifling her anger using a mildly innocent tone because she knew she was risking his wrath. Her classmates all stared at her with wide-eyes. Their sensei was treated with reverence by most adults, let alone his five-year old students.  
The trainer turned to glare at her with so much heat Fuka shoved herself further away from him on the fence. "You!" he said pointing to the rebel for he knew none of their names, "You think everyone is as happy as you with parents who will buy you expensive lessons and jackets and a body that does all you ask! Well there are children just your age suffering every day just to breathe! So just get your selfish little body through that door and you are going to meet these children with tubes coming out their ears and give them anything they desire!" His voice was at its most intimidating, the words uttered like bullets that struck in a perfectly calculated pattern in Fuka's heart.  
The children snapped into a straight line that would have been acceptable in the Army and marched straight into the building. They got all the way to the children's ward before the children had recovered enough to make awed whispers and giggles to dispel the lingering fear from the trauma. "My mom told me he has a brother with leukemia. That's why Sensei's so crazy!" This message was passed down the line of children with the speed only a rumor can reach.  
Fuka, still trembling not with aftershock but with anger, entered the first room their group came to. "Hayama," Sengoku-san said in a voice void of any emotion to the pale youth who was dwarfed in the large hospital bed.  
  
"Onii-san," answered the boy in an equally cold tone. The whispers among the children increased, "Oh my god! They're brothers!"  
Fuka peered at the boy curiously. His complexion was drained of any color and he was unhealthily thin. His body looked like it had a very thin handhold onto life. Except for his eyes... They stared out like lanterns from the angular planes of his face and they burned with an intensity that rivaled with any lantern flame.  
"What do you iwant/i?" the boy asked with a hostile tone.  
"Me? Me? What do iI /iwant? I never want anything! Do I? I never ask for anything. You've taken my whole life and now you want to know what I want?" Sengoku laughed harshly. "No, I just brought my little troupe here to wish you well, of course. Best wishes dear brother!" The sarcasm was almost tangible, hanging in the air.  
"No," said the five-year old boy with a perception well beyond his years, "You didn't bring them to wish me well. You brought them to show me what I'm imissing/i."  
"What nonsense from an ungrateful little boy!" Sengoku said coldly, "No, and here I'll prove it. I've brought you a gift." A chill ran up Fuka's spine as Sengoku turned to her with a cruel glint in his eye. He roughly pushed her up to Hayama's bedside. "Take her, take this pretty little girl spoiled with the pleasures of life."  
Up close, the ashen pallor of the boy and the horrible tubes that exited his every orifice were even more terrible to observe. Fuka trembled at just the sight of him, not in pity, for she was young and empathy was not her forte, but in revulsion.  
"Give him a kiss, my dear," Sengoku said with a nasty smile. Fuka looked up at her trainer not bothering to disguise her horror at the idea of pressing her lips to the yellow skin that seemed seconds away from simply falling from his cheek. "Do it," he said in the same voice he used to call out instructions in the gym. It rang with inevitability.  
Fuka leaned forward aiming for the cheek but Sengoku's voice rang out again, "No dear, no." Fuka understood. Later, she wondered how she mustered up the courage to peck him on the lips as she was forced to. Afterwards she could not stifle her tears as Sengoku laughed at their appearance.  
"Alright Hayama, savor that over the years. Was that your first kiss? Well it'll also probably be your last. Yet another favor I've done for you. At least you've kissed before you die. You've never thanked me, never thanked me for giving up my life so you can die in ipeace/i, Hayama, brother dear."  
Fuka, now that her part was over, was safely out of Sengoku's scrutiny. She eagerly stepped away from the boy who she could not, for the life of her, relate to. She cowered near the door, unable to feel anything for him besides fear and disgust. She had grown up with parents who loved her and provided for her with memories where the sadness was always smothered with a happy resolution. She had never encountered sadness that couldn't be healed but had to be lived with and dealt with like a sore that refused to heal. In such naiveté Fuka only wanted to shut her eyes and use disgust to postpone the knowledge that must eventually be learned, that life for some yields only misery.  
Hayama turned his head on the pillow, away from them, and closed his eyes. Sengoku shook his head condescendingly and led his crying charges away from the room with the boy who for each second that passed made him only more aware of the death that had not yet come for him.  
  
* Sengoku-san is the teacher of class 1 in junior high. He has a very very bad prejudice against Hayama. Remember he hits him??? 


End file.
